"It cannot be my duty, sir, to be a sneak. This secret came into my
hands by accident. If I had been monitor for the evening, it would,
of course, be my duty to make it known. Not having been in any such
capacity, _I_ think were I to turn telltale I should be no gentleman."
"It's a new order of things when fifty must come to fifteen to be told
what it is to be a gentleman," the president said, hotly. "Perhaps you
don't know, sir, that if you persist in your resolution you lose all
hope of the leadership? You will be considered an accessory in the
crime, and you will lose as many credit marks as would be taken from
the ringleader were he detected."
"I can afford to lose those better than my own self-respect," Max said,
stoutly, and then added, "I think _you_ would have done the same,
President King, when you were at my age."
Hal waited to hear no more, but edged cautiously from his place of
concealment. He thought he was not above profiting by Max's generosity.
He tried to think Max was a fool, but there was an inner voice in his
heart which whispered that there was something sublime in such folly,
and, try as he might, this inner voice would not altogether be silenced.
The days went on swiftly. Max kept his scholarship up to the highest
standard, but the twenty credit marks taken from his list put all hope
of his attaining the leadership out of the question.
It was the very night before the examination when President King
answered a tap on his door with his well known, resonant "Come in." His
visitor was Hal Somers.
The next morning, after prayers, the president said, very quietly,--
"Young gentlemen, before the examination commences I have to detain you
long enough to perform a simple act of justice. I acquit Max Grenoble
of all complicity in the misdemeanor committed on the night of the 14th
of June; the entire burden of the same having been assumed by Henry
Somers, in behalf of himself, William Graves, George Saunders, and John
Morse. And as this confession was voluntary, I shall visit upon the
offenders no severer penalty than the loss of all their credit marks
for the last quarter."
Poor little Molyneux Bell forgot time and place, and threw his
handkerchief into the air with one glad shout:--
"I knew Max would come out right at last; I knew he would."
So Max went back the next year to Eagleheight, as the head boy; and
under his leadership a new state of affairs was brought about. He led
them not only in class, and in athletic exercises, but in all true
manliness. They had found out at length that he had plenty of "pluck
and grit," even though he might not emulate Sayers or Heenan. One of
his warmest friends was Hal Somers, in whose character enough nobility
was latent to recognize at last the sterling worth even of his rival.
AGATHA'S LONELY DAYS.
They had buried Agatha's mother,--put her away under a sheltering
tree, beloved of bird and breeze, which waved its boughs between her
and the bending, changeful summer sky. Agatha thought no other spot in
the world could be so pleasant or so dear; and she longed, from the
depths of her little, ten-years-old heart, to stay there with bird, and
breeze, and tree, and the buried mother, who must hear her voice, she
thought, even though she could never reply to it again in all the years.
Her father, pale with sorrow himself, had never come near enough to his
child to be her comforter now. He talked little to any one of either
his joys or his sorrows. Agatha loved him, partly because she had
always been taught to love and have faith in him; and, partly, too,
because she knew well, with that childish and intuitive perception
which discovers every thing, how dear he was to her mother; but she did
not feel near to him, and she could not possibly have told him how she
longed to stay there beside that grave. She made no protest when he
took her hand to lead her away, though it seemed to her that she left
her heart behind her, and that the lump in her breast was a cold stone
to which warmth would never come back any more.
She went home, and some one took off her little black hat, and put on
an apron over her mourning gown, and then she was left in peace to
sit at the window, and look out toward the spot where they had laid
her mother, and wonder what was to become of _her_. They called her
to supper, but she was not hungry,--she thought she never should be
again,--and there was no mother to beguile her with dainty morsels.
When they found she did not want to come they let her alone, and still
she sat there and wondered.
At last the twilight fell, and in the dusk her father came to her.
He loved her very dearly; and especially now, that her mother was
gone, and only she was left to him, he felt for her an unspeakable
tenderness; literally unspeakable, for he did not know how to utter one
word of it to his child. He longed to comfort her,--to tell her how
dear she was to him,--but he could not. He sat down beside her, and
looked at her little pale face, outlined against the western window,
with such a depth of pity that it seemed to make his voice quieter and
colder than ever when he spoke, because it required such an effort to
speak at all.
"To-morrow, Agatha, I shall take you to your Aunt Irene. Every girl
needs a woman's care, and she will watch over you as faithfully as if
you were her own."
Agatha never dreamed of objecting. She tried to think that she might as
well be in one place as another, for she shouldn't live long anywhere
without her mother. But she dreaded Aunt Irene's watching, as she
dreaded few things in the world. She had made visits now and then at
the quiet old homestead of which this aunt was mistress, and it seemed
to her, on such occasions, that Aunt Irene did nothing but watch her
from the time she entered the house; and in those days it had taken all
the sunshine of her mother's joyous nature to gild the visits into some
substitute for the pleasures other children took in their vacations.
Now, to go without her mother--all alone--and be "watched over" by
her aunt! She began to know that she had a heart, after all, by its
frightened fluttering.
Aunt Irene was her father's sister, with all the Raymond peculiarities
of pride, and reserve, and silence, which made him half a stranger
to his own child, intensified in her by her life of seclusion and of
absolute authority over herself and her possessions. Her experiences
had been narrow, and her aims had been narrow also. Mr. Raymond saw
this, his one sister, always at her best; and, through long knowledge
of her, he understood her really trustworthy and excellent qualities.
He felt that he was doing for Agatha the best which fate now permitted
him to do, in confiding her to this guidance, so sure to be wise, as he
believed, even if not loving.
The long car-ride next day was almost a silent one. Agatha would have
rejected with hot juvenile scorn, the idea that the presence or absence
of any material comforts could affect her grief; and yet she would
have felt a little less desolate, I think, if the heat had not been so
intense, the dust so choking, and the seat so hard and straight.
When she had made the journey in other years with her mother, how much
shorter the way had seemed. The fresh linen frocks she used to wear
were so much easier and cooler than the stifling black gown she had
on to-day; and somehow her mother knew just when to open the windows
and when to shut them, and if the seat was straight and hard, there
was always mamma's lap or shoulder to lean against; and she forgot
to be weary when mamma beguiled the time by poem or story. But her
father rode silently, looking into vacancy for a face he would never
see again; and after he had once bought Agatha's ticket, and seated
her beside him, it did not occur to him to do any thing to relieve the
monotony of the long, dusty ride.
It was dusk when the stage from the railway station set them down at
Aunt Irene's door. Agatha walked up the path timidly. It was a long,
straight path, and either side of it grew thoroughly well-disciplined
flowers; a rosebush on one side, just opposite to a rosebush on the
other,--Agatha wondered if either of them would have dared to bear
one rose more than the other did,--a peony on one side and its mate
opposite; so of a syringa bush, a flowering almond, and a root of
lilies. Between the well-marshalled ranks of flowers, which somehow
made the child think of soldiers on guard, she followed her father up
to the door, where Aunt Irene waited, grim chatelaine.
Mr. Raymond shook hands with his sister, and then said gravely,--
"Irene, I have brought you my poor, motherless little girl," and Aunt
Irene put out her firm, strong, unyielding hand and took the child's
into it, then bent and--not kissed her, kisses belonged to the dead
days--but laid her lips on her cheek, and so Agatha went in.
Every thing was good and substantial in Aunt Irene's house. You found
there no frail stands which a careless touch might throw over, no
brittle ornaments, no egg-shell china. The carpets were dark and rich
and sombre. The tables and chairs were all of solid wood, and stood
high and square. The sofas were heavy and firm, and the whole air of
the place was grave and respectable, as Aunt Irene's surroundings
should have been. I am not sure that any light, modern, fancy articles,
suggestive of elegant idleness, had they been placed in her rooms,
would not themselves have perceived their unsuitableness, and trundled
off on their own castors.
The supper which awaited the travellers followed the prevailing fashion
of the house. The biscuits were three times as large as the biscuits
on other tea-tables. There were no frisky rolls, no light-minded whips
or wafers. But there were good old-fashioned preserve, serious-looking
cake, and substantial slices of cold meat.
Aunt Irene herself, sitting behind the tea-urn--solid silver, of
course--comported with all the rest. She was a solid woman, with no
superfluous flesh, and yet with a well-fed, well-to-do aspect, which
was unmistakable. Her head was high and narrow, her features good, her
strong hair had disdained to turn gray, and her eyes were keen if cold.
Her lips, which had never cooed over babies, or soothed the sorrows of
little children, or talked nonsense to any listener, were thin, as to
such seldom-used lips seemed natural. They shut tightly over all her
secrets.
Agatha's head began to ache furiously, and she could not eat. The room
swam round and round till she felt as if she were the centre of a
rolling ball, and her chair rocked, she thought, and she was slipping
off it, when her father saw her white, strange face and wavering
figure, and sprang up just in time to catch her in his arms.
"She is sick, Irene," he said. "Where is her room? Let me carry her
there."
While he went upstairs with her she revived, and lifted her tired head
from his shoulder to look into his eyes.
"I wish you were not going away, papa," she ventured to say.
"I can't stay on in the old places, where I have lived with your
mother, without her," was the answer which came, and which was like
giving her a key wherewith to unlock her father's heart, and so made
the two nearer to each other than they had ever been before.
"Some time will you come back, and let me live with you?" she
whispered, wondering at her own rashness.
"If you are good, dear, and learn to be womanly and helpful, and to
take care of yourself, I will come back for you, or you shall come to
me, and we will be together always."
No one knew with what passionate yet timid hope Agatha's little heart
beat as she lay there alone on her strange, high bed. Womanly and
helpful,--that was what he had said, and she would be just that. She
would do all Aunt Irene said, and never mind how much she was watched,
since watching might help to make her nearer right, and get her ready
all the sooner to go to her father and be his comfort.
The very next day he left her. The death of his wife had seemed to
sweep away all his old landmarks. He had been, hitherto, a quiet
unadventurous man contented with his narrow routine of daily duty,
which always brought him back to the tenderness of her welcoming smile.
Now that smile was frozen for ever on her cold lips, and a strange
restlessness possessed him. He had meant to stay a few days with Agatha
in her new home, but he felt as if the inaction would drive him mad, so
he hurried away; and a week afterward Aunt Irene showed Agatha his name
in the passenger list of a European steamer.
It was June then, and the gay summer went on working its daily miracles
round Agatha's quiet home. Bright birds sang to her, and gay flowers
bloomed for her picking; and nature ran riot in a wood a quarter of a
mile away, where the flowers asked no leave of Aunt Irene to blow, or
the birds to sing. The child used to go there when her daily tasks were
done, but she carried with her so sad a heart that nothing seemed to
cheer her. She wondered what all the growing things were so glad about,
in the summer weather, and, remembering an old phrase she had heard,
she concluded it was because nature was their mother, and nature never
died.
"Oh, Mother Nature, I wish you were a relative of mine!" she used to
cry, sometimes, with unconscious quaintness; but before the summer was
over, leaning her head so much on the mosses, a sense of kinship began
to thrill in her pulses, and before she knew it the pain in her heart
was eased a little, and she began to think of her mother, not as buried
up and hidden away from her, but as near to her and waiting for her.
Meantime she never forgot her father's words,--"Womanly and
helpful,"--they were the keynote of her life. Aunt Irene wondered at
her. She had thought her a mischievous little elf in the old days,
but there was no mischief in her now. She herself respected no more
religiously the rules of the household than did this little quiet child.
As for trouble, why the creature gave none,--she was learning to do
every thing for herself. At last even Aunt Irene grew half frightened
at this still patience, which she felt must be unnatural to childhood.
She began to wish that she could hear Agatha laugh or shout,--that
sometimes the child would tear her gowns, when she had on her oldest
ones, at least,--that she would show some self-will, some little trace
of her descent from apple-eating Adam of the old time.
She wrote to her brother how good and quiet his little girl was; but
her heart misgave her. She did not know what more she could do to make
her small inmate comfortable, but she had a vague sense that Agatha was
living an unchildlike life, and was less happy than in the old days
when the little girl and her mother came there together.
Mother Nature has her own methods of exacting compensation, and for
Agatha's overstrained and unnatural life pay-day came in the autumn. It
had grown too cold to lie with her ear on the mosses, listening to the
earth's pulse-beats, and the child sat quietly within doors, until one
day she turned very pale and rolled off her stiff, straight chair to
the carpet, and Aunt Irene picked her up, a lighter weight now than in
the spring-time, and carried her to her room.
Dr. Greene was sent for at once, and he looked at his little patient
very gravely, and then whispered "typhoid" to her aunt.
Aunt Irene wrote a hurried line to Agatha's father, and then took up
her post at the bedside, which for five weeks she scarcely left. She
had a heart, only long ago she had concluded it was an inconvenience
and locked it up; but now it broke loose from its confinement and half
frightened her by its throbbings.
Her brother was very dear to her. She had loved him all his life, after
the deep, silent, undemonstrative fashion of those who love but few;
and now if this fresh grief was to come upon him how could she bear to
see him suffer? But she did not allow these thoughts to interfere with
her usefulness at Agatha's bedside. Day and night she watched over the
child, who never once knew her, but who constantly mistook her for her
mother, and clung to her passionately in the delirium of her fever.
"O mother!" she would say, "I thought I never, never should see you
again. No one was cross to me, mamma darling; but no one loved me
since you went away. I've been trying to grow womanly and helpful, so
papa would be glad to have me with him by and by; but now you've come
and you'll love me whether I'm good or not."
Then again she seemed roaming through the woods.
"Hark," she would say, "hear how the birds sing, and see the gay
flowers swing in the wind! Their mother doesn't die, and they have no
aunts. O birdies! you don't know how cold Aunt Irene's lips are."
And Aunt Irene, listening, bent over the bed with tears blinding her
eyes. Had her life been all a failure? she asked herself. She had tried
to do her duty: was it all nothing, because she hadn't loved? Oh! if
Agatha would but get well she would find some way to make her happy.
Before the crisis of the child's fever came, her father had arrived.
The letter found him in Paris, and he had set out in twenty-four hours
upon his homeward journey.
"Is she alive?" he asked, when his sister met him at the door, and
started back, shocked by his haggard face.
"Yes, she lives, and the doctor says her fever must turn soon. Come and
see her."
The little flushed face had never been so beautiful in its brightest
days of health and joy, as now, with the clustering rings of hair
framing in scarlet cheeks and large, strangely brilliant eyes. The
father's heart almost broke as he stood there, unable to make her
recognize his presence. While he watched, she said what she had said so
often during the hours of that wasting sickness,--
"I have tried to be womanly and helpful. I think papa will want me
after awhile. I hope so for Aunt Irene's lips are cold."
How keenly he reproached himself then for having left her, only God
knew. He was a silent man, as I have said, and silently he shared Aunt
Irene's vigil without even thinking of rest after his journey.
The next night Dr. Greene waited also by that bedside for the crisis he
foresaw. At last the child slept.
"When she wakes we shall know what to expect," he said, and went away
into the next room for a little rest. But the father and the aunt never
moved. It was midnight, and every thing was strangely, unnaturally
still, as it always seems to watchers in the middle of the night,
when they heard Agatha call out of the hush and the stillness, with a
sudden, glad cry of recognition,--
"O mamma! mamma!"
"Is she dying?" Mr. Raymond's look asked, for his lips refused to
speak, and his sister's face made answer, "Not yet."
The hours, the long, slow hours went on. The night grew darker and
deeper. Then above the hills there stretched a faint line of dawn-light
which deepened at length to rose, and then was shot through by a golden
arrow from the rising sun. And then, as the dawning glory touched the
little white, still face upon the pillows, the eyes opened, and a
voice--Agatha's own natural voice, but oh, so faint and low!--said,
softly but gladly,--
"I have seen mamma. I wanted to go with her, but she said papa and Aunt
Irene both needed me, and I was to stay here and grow well and happy.
And so I shall."
"And so, please God, you shall," Dr. Greene said, cheerily, having
come in from the next room; and the father sank upon his knees by the
bedside, with some murmured words, which only the Father in heaven
understood, upon his lips; and Aunt Irene hurried off, she said, to get
something for the child to take, but she stopped a long time upon the
way.
"I knew you were here, papa," and Agatha reached out her thin little
fingers to touch the bowed head beside her. "I knew, because mamma told
me."
Strangely enough, all her timidity had vanished. Mamma had said that
papa and Aunt Irene needed her, and that was enough. Soon her aunt came
in, and she looked up, gratefully.
"You have been so good to me, Aunt Irene," she said, "so good that I
thought it was mamma who was tending me, but I know now it was you,
and I think you must love me, because you have kept me alive."
And so my story of Agatha's lonely days ends; for after this she never
was lonely any more. Her father and aunt had learned that little hearts
need something more than to be clothed and fed; and Agatha had learned,
by their care for her, their love for her, and never doubted again that
she had her own place in their hearts.
But had she seen her own mamma? you ask. Ah, who knows the mysteries of
the border land between life and death? Some of you will believe that
she but dreamed a dream; and others, perchance, will think the Father,
who has so often sent His angels to comfort His earthly children, sent
to her the home-faced angel whom her heart loved. I cannot tell. I only
know that Agatha believed always that a beloved voice not of this world
had spoken to her.
THIN ICE.
The little village of Westbrook seemed to have been standing still,
while all the rest of the world had gone on. The people lived very much
as their fathers and grandfathers had lived before them. They were all
farmers except the doctor and the minister.
The doctor was a very skilful man; but he had been reared on a
Westbrook farm, and when he went out into the world to get his medical
education he had brought back with him, to quiet Westbrook, only the
knowledge he sought, and none of the airs and graces of town life.
The minister, too, was Westbrook born and bred, and his wife had
scarcely ever been outside the town in all her days, so that there was
no one in the simple community to set extravagant fashions, or turn
foolish heads by gayety or splendor.
[Illustration: THIN ICE.--PAGE 100.]
It was, therefore, as much of an event as if Queen Victoria herself
were to come and spend the winter in Boston, when it became generally
known that a rich widow lady and her son were to come, the last of
September, and very probably stay on through the winter under Dr.
Simms's roof. A famous city physician, with whom Dr. Simms had studied
once, had recommended him and Westbrook to Mrs. Rosenburgh, when it
became necessary for her to take her puny boy into some still, country
retreat.
They came during the last golden days of September, and all Westbrook
was alive with interest about them. The lady looked delicate, but she
was as pretty as she was pale, and her boy was curiously like her,--as
pale, as pretty, almost as feminine.
There was plenty of opportunity to see them, for the city doctor had
given orders that the young gentleman should keep out of doors all the
time; so, mornings, he and his mother were always to be seen in their
low, luxurious carriage, drawn by high-stepping bay horses, and driven
by a faithful, careful, middle-aged man, with iron-gray hair and an
impenetrable face.
Sometimes, in the afternoons, they would all be out again, but oftener
Mrs. Rosenburgh remained at home, and her son drove, for himself, a
pair of pretty black ponies, while the impenetrable, iron-gray man sat
behind, ready to seize the reins in case of accident.
At first the boy's face seemed often drawn by pain, or white with
weariness, and he would look round him listlessly, as he drove, with
eyes that saw nothing, or at least failed to find any object of
interest. But the clear autumn air proved invigorating, and when the
glorious, prismatic days of late October came he looked as if, indeed,
he had been re-created.
And now one could see that he began to take a natural, human interest
in what went on around him. He would drive up his little pony carriage
to the wall, and look over it to watch the apple-pickers and the
harvesters. No one spoke to him, and he spoke to no one. The lads
of his own age, who watched his ponies with boyish envy, never
dreamed that the owner of these fairy coursers could be as shy as one
of themselves, and, indeed, as much more shy as delicate weakness
naturally is than rosy strength. They thought his silence was pride,
and felt a half-defiant hatred of him accordingly.
Yet many and many a day he went home to his mother, and sitting beside
her with his head upon her knee, cried out, in very bitterness,--
"Oh if I only could be like one of those healthy boys! How gladly I'd
give up Pease-blossom and Mustard-seed, to be able to run about as they
do! Shall I never, never be strong, mamma?"